Value for Money

One of the things we've been doing over the last few days is writing our value for money report - part of a series of reports produced for the University to show how we're achieving value for money, pointing out areas where we could do it better, and looking at future strategies. We have some excellent examples from CiCS, especially around infrastructure, voice and data and printing.

We've expanded our local cloud server and storage infrastructure making use of aggregation, resource sharing, standardisation and thin provisioning. This means we only grow capacity when it is really needed. We make the best use of resources by sharing - we supply capacity that meets peak demand, but not all peaks are at the same time. It also means we can clone test systems from live data ensuring that upgrades have a good chance of success with minimal storage overhead. We can also snapshot systems prior to upgrades etc quickly reverting if things go wrong.  This usually answers my main question at our weekly CAB (Change Advisory Board) which is "what happens if it all goes horribly wrong?" Usual answer - we'll have taken a snapshot so we revert. I have to admit that the "we" in the above paragraph definitely doesn't include me - some much cleverer people than that do it all.
Last year we had 750 virtual servers in production and development, this year we have 1063.

The way in which the network is being designed and deployed is also relevant to VfM.  Wherever possible we install an appropriate amount of outlets that meets the users needs (not too many, not too few) and only patch those that are actually being used. This in turn means that we can install fewer switches than under the previous ‘standard’ model making savings on both capital and operational spend.
We’re also revisiting older deployments and retro-fitting the ‘only patch used ports’ model, enabling us to reduce the amount of kit needed in those properties (making operational savings there), with recovered kit then being deployed in other areas (making capital savings on those projects)
Continued roll-out of IP Telephony and underlying infrastructure provides better/easier access to voice services for users whilst reducing the amount of network equipment needed to provide it.


My final example, from many more listed in the report, is the My Sustainable Print Service which went live in April 2014; the service was made available to all Staff and PGT and the Students Union. Student print equipment was replaced in the Information Commons as part of this agreement improving quality and functionality. The recurrent annual saving for the university is £1.4M; 19 tonnes of carbon saved, reduced from 24T to 5T. A new fleet of approx 555 new multifunctional print, copy, scan devices has been installed on campus. The legacy fleet has been removed and so far totals 1500 devices which have gone to a Social Enterprise; toner cartridges have been removed and/or sold with an approx value to date of £5k.



As user expecttions increase and  IT becomes even more ubiquitous and critical, we will keep exploring ways of making our services more efficient and demonstrating value for money.

Virtual ABBA

Today was a departmental meeting, and we were lucky to have the Registrar address us. He gave an excellent overview of the current situation facing us and other Universities, and the role that we can play in helping the University of Sheffield move forward. He talked about the uncertainty facing the sector, and how the successful Universities will be the ones that can seize opportunities by being agile and flexible. The need to promote collaboration and partnerships was emphasised, and how communication and staying connected will become more and more important.  As student fees rise, then the student's expectations will change, and we'll need to understand them and try and meet, or in the words of Disney, exceed them.

That was followed by a session on "Virtualisation: the new reality" delivered by Dave Speake, whch explained the progress of our virtualisation agenda - absolutely vital work which is usually completely hidden from our users, and sometimes from the rest of the department.  Pre 2010 we had around 200 physical servers whereas now we have 70 physical computers and 110 virtual ones, and by the end of this year we should have 50 physical ones and 200 virtual machines. The main advantages to us of this are:

• It's cheaper than buying and running physical machines
• Easier to manage
• Uses less electricity
• More flexible
• More reliable
• More functional
• Quicker to set up

We've also been doing a lot of work virtualising our discs We've gone from 15 different types of disc boxes with loads of discs of all types in individual computer to 2 physical disc enclosures and nearly all of our storage on NetApp discs with all of the benefits listed above. Some great work by the Infrastructure Team.

We then had a look back on what we'd achieved this year, and what we are planning to do next year, which will be the subject of another post - too long for this one!

Finally, the all important announcement of who'd won the ABBAs - the Above and Beyond Awards. I'd decided at the last minute to include pictures of all the nominees and winners, but could only get my hands on ones from parties so nearly everyone had a silly hat on, or a drink in their hand!

The winners were:


Outstanding collague Award:     John Ollerenshaw
Unsung hero Award:                  Jayne Halsey
Team Award:                             The SAP Basis team, Neil Campbell, Andy Turner and James Ibbotson

Well done to all, and the rest of the nominees.

Pizza boxes to washing machines

Odd day today - was due to give a presentation to our Executive Board about challenges for us and the University, but got rescheduled at last minute. Knew I should have spent last night in the garden rather than putting the finishing touches to my talk! Hopefully will get my chance in a couple of weeks.

Then the CiCS Exec had one of our regular weekly meetings, where we spent a lot of time talking about how we cost our services. Lots of good work done by one of our Section Heads, and we have some preliminary costings. Still some work to do in refining it, but a good start. We've gone for a top down approach rather than bottom up - that means rather than taking every little discrete unit of cost and aggregating them up for different services, we focus on the major items of expenditure (such as staffing), and allocate as much as possible to the different services, whilst using a more generic method for the smaller items. Some interesting findings so far - we don't spend a lot on supporting research for example, but we do spend a lot on our back-end systems. Will be interesting to see what the final figures look like, and how they will feed in to our planning process.

Later this afternoon I had a meeting of the heads of administrative departments where we had a quick look at what the budget might mean for us (not good!), and a presentation about the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health's strategic plan.

Finally we had an update about the University's carbon emission reduction programme. We all know we have to reduce our carbon emissions by 34% by 2020, but that reduction is on our 1990 baseline. That's equivalent to a 48% reduction on the 2005 baseline. Huge task. Biggest target is power usage. Just over 11% of the total power usage of the University can be attributed to IT, so we have a significant role to play. One of the areas which has seen some of the best results is server virtualisation. I was going to mention this in my UEB talk today. I don't expect them to be interested in the technology of moving from one server type to another (pizza boxes to washing machines in my simple terms):

but they should be interested in these figures:

Then - 130 servers, 5 year energy cost of £567,047
Now - 4 servers, 5 year energy cost of £130, 478

Some very good work, and great savings.